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Tuesday, December 7, 2010

South Korean Calculation

This is a detailed analysis of the present
awakening of the Korean conflict and what is not told in the press is just how
much of this is driven by South Korean adventurism.We are so used to the antics of North Korea, that we forget that South Korea
has a huge interest in ending the North Korean regime as soon as possible.

China
almost certainly wants no part of the situation and North
Korea presently provides no value as a counter weight to
its commercial ally in South
Korea.Thus a sudden strike that brought the North’s regime tumbling down
serves both Chinese and South Korean Interests.The Chinese simply do not want to be blamed for it.

These maneuvers by the South may well be a way for
the two allies to sucker the North into a desperate assault which can be thwarted
by massive US
airpower followed up with a general collapse of the North’s infrastructure long
before an actual ground assault in which the Chinese may actually participate
for humanitarian reasons.

I suspect that the calculation has been made to
end the dynasty of the Great Leader.Let
us hope that it is not a miscalculation.

And yes, a major exercise is now beginning and any attack will certainly include an amphibious landing that will bypass the line of demarcation where the bulk of the North Korean army is stuck without the capacity to move under air assault. They would get to sit out the war shelling rice paddies.

An artillery duel between North and South
Korean forces on November 23 has set in motion a series of events which
threaten to spiral out of control.

On November 22, South
Korea began its annual military exercise, involving
including 70,000 troops, dozens of South Korean and U.S. warships and some 500
aircraft. The following day, South Korean artillery stationed on YeonpyeongIsland began a live ammunition drill,
firing shells into the surrounding sea.

The island is situated quite near to the North
Korean mainland, and lies in disputed waters. At the end of the Korean War in
1953, U.S. General Mark Clark unilaterally established the western sea border
to North Korea's
disadvantage. Rather than in a perpendicular line, the Northern Limit Line was
drawn to curve sharply upwards, handing over islands and a prime fishing area
to the South that would otherwise have gone to North Korea. The North, having
had no say in the delineation of its sea border, has never recognized the
Northern Limit Line. (1)

South Korean troops have been based on the
island since the end of the Korean War. There is also a small fishing village
in close proximity to the military base; unavoidably so, given that the island
is less than three square miles in size.

In response to the South Korean announcement
of an impending artillery drill, North Korea telephoned the South
Korean military on the morning of November 23, urging them to cancel plans to
fire shells into what the North regarded as its territorial waters. The North
warned that if the drill proceeded, they would respond with a "resolute
physical counter-strike." (2)

Nevertheless, the artillery drill proceeded
and four hours later, North Korean artillery fired on the island. In the first
round, 150 shells were shot, of which 60 hit the island. Then 20 more shells
were fired in a second round. In all, four people on the island were killed and
18 wounded. (3)

The South Korean military telegraphed the
North, asking them to cease, but to no avail. Then their artillery returned
fire at the North, firing 80 shells. One shell directly hit a North Korean
military barracks. Although many of the shells appeared to have inflicted
little damage, an official at the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff noted,
"Satellite images show our shells landed on a cluster of barracks in North Korea,
so we presume there have been many casualties and considerable property
damage." (4)

Facing a barrage of criticism from domestic
hawks for having responded in too tepid a manner, South Korean Defense Minister
Kim Tae-young resigned from his position. Yet the South Korean response
probably could not have been increased significantly without risking a wider
conflict.

During the drill, South Korean artillery on YeonpyeongIsland fired in a southward direction,
away from the North Korean mainland, and this was not the first time that such
drills had been conducted. North Korean forces could have made their point
sufficiently by splashing some shells into the sea. Instead, they overreacted
in a manner that manifested an inexcusable disregard for human life by
targeting the island.

Why the North did so can best be explained by
recent developments in relations between the two Koreas. This was, after all, the
first artillery duel between the two nations in forty years, so something led
to it.

President Lee Myung-bak of the conservative
Grand National Party took office in February 2008, vowing to reverse the
Sunshine Policy of warming relations with North Korea. The government of
Lee's predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun, had signed several agreements on economic
cooperation with North Korea,
including joint mining operations in the North. Lee killed every one these
agreements, ensuring that they would never be implemented. The railroad leading
from the South to the North, which had just been reconnected under former
President Roh, is now closed for good. That project had promised to benefit
both Koreas, providing the
South with a cheaper and more convenient route for shipping goods to China and Russia, and giving the North added
income through user fees. South Korean tourist operations at Mt.Kumgang
in the North are closed. Reunions of family members separated by the border
have stopped. The only remaining remnant of the Sunshine Policy is the presence
of South Korean firms operating at an industrial park in Kaesong, North Korea,
and its days are probably numbered.

Then there was the incident in which the South
Korean corvette Cheonan was sunk, in May of this year. In a stacked
investigation, South Korea
concluded that a North Korean submarine had targeted the vessel with a torpedo.
The evidence, however, does not fully back that assertion and a Russian team's
investigation determined that an accidental encounter with a sea mine was a
more likely cause. (5) North
Korea's repeated requests to participate in
an investigation, or to at least view the evidence, were consistently rebuffed.
Instead the Lee Administration utilized the incident to further sour relations
between the two Koreas.

Perhaps most significantly, when Roh Moo-hyun
was president of South Korea,
emergency communication channels were established between the two Koreas,
specifically for the purpose of opening dialogue and limiting or preventing
armed conflicts whenever they arose or threatened to do so. On a number of occasions,
those communication channels stopped potential conflicts before they either
occurred or escalated. Those channels no longer exist, thanks to Lee's
dismantling of agreements with North
Korea, and as a result four South Koreans
and an unknown number of North Koreans are now dead. (6)

That North Korea would feel threatened
is not surprising. Its economy is crippled by the imposition of draconian
Western sanctions, and the annual South Korean-U.S. military exercises are
intended to intimidate. Furthermore, the rhetoric from Washington
has been unremittingly hostile, and now with a more conservative government, so
is South Korea's.

Nor is North
Korea unaware of the fact that in February 2003,
President Bush told Chinese President Jiang Zemin that if the nuclear issue
could not be solved diplomatically, he would "have to consider a military
strike against North Korea."
(7) One month later, Bush ordered a fleet into the region, including the
aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. Six F-117 Stealth bombers were sent to South
Korea, and nearly 50 fighters and bombers to Guam.
The possibility of military action was on the table, Bush told a South Korean
official. (8) Due to the efforts of China and South Korea's progressive
president at the time, Bush chose dialogue, albeit offset to a large degree by
his imposition of further sanctions against North Korea. It has also certainly
not gone unnoticed by North
Korea that any halting diplomatic efforts
have ceased altogether once President Obama took office. And with the
pronounced deterioration in relations set in motion by President Lee Myung-bak,
his administration has made it clear that he has no interest in diplomacy
either.

Following the clash over Yeonpyeong,
China called for dialogue
and a reduction of tensions, sending envoys to both South and North Korea. It proposed that the
six nations that had at one time participated in denuclearization talks, South
and North Korea, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia, meet for emergency
discussions "to exchange views on major issues of concern to the parties
at present." The meetings would not be a resumption of talks on
denuclearization, although China
hoped that "they will create conditions for their resumption."
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei stated, "The starting point
for China proposing
emergency consultations is to ease the tensions on the KoreanPeninsula
and provide a platform of engagement and dialogue." (9)

The Chinese proposal should have been welcomed
as the only sensible approach to the problem. But officials of the Obama
Administration condemned China
for being "irresponsible" by putting forth such a proposal. Instead,
they urged China to get on
board with the program of pressuring North Korea and further escalating
tensions and the risk of war. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs snottily
dismissed the proposal by saying that the U.S. and other nations "are
not interested in stabilizing the region through a series of P.R.
activities." (10)

South Korea, too, rejected China's proposal. The U.S., South Korea,
and Japan willfully
misrepresented China's
proposal as merely being a call for a resumption of the six-party talks on
denuclearization. Domestic audiences were not hearing that the proposal's
purpose was to prevent further conflict. Instead, Japan said that talks would
be "impossible" under the circumstances, while a South Korean
official said that President Lee "made it clear that now is not the time
for discussing" six-party talks. (11) Indeed. Not when one's goal is to
further inflame the situation. To further that objective, U.S. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton is meeting with the foreign secretaries of South Korea and Japan
to map out a common program in dealing with North Korea. (12) It goes without
saying that dialogue with North
Korea will not be part of that program.

President Lee has promised to take a much
harder line on North Korea,
and already the South has sent 400,000 propaganda leaflets across the border on
balloons. (13) There has also been talk of resuming loudspeaker broadcasts across
the border. The sending of leaflets was in violation of a 2004 agreement
between the two sides to halt propaganda campaigns aimed at each other.

By the end of December, South Korea plans to hold another round of
artillery drills on islands lying in disputed waters, including, dismayingly
enough, YeonpyeongIsland. Nothing could be
calculated to be more provoking under the circumstances. In preparation for the
response to the drills that are expected from North Korea, island defenses are
being beefed up. South Korea has added multiple rocket launchers, howitzers,
missile systems and advanced precision-guided artillery to the Yeonpyeong
arsenal. (14)

According to a South Korean official, "We
decided to stage the same kind of fire drill as the one we carried out on the
island on November 23 to display our determination." (15)

The new drills appear calculated to provoke a
conflict, and this time South
Korea is intent on an asymmetrical response.
The military is revising its rules of engagement so as to jettison concerns
about starting a wider conflict. If former Defense Minister Kim Tae-young is to
believed, if there is another North Korean strike, then warships and fighter
jets of both South Korea and
the U.S.
will launch attacks on the North. (16)

Incoming Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin is if
anything even more determined to fan the flames of conflict into a wider
conflagration. The South Korean military will immediately launch
"psychological warfare," including, presumably, loudspeaker
broadcasts across the border. The North has promised to target loudspeakers if
they are put in operation, and that would in turn provide the
pretext for the South Korean military to launch combat operations. If there is
another exchange of fire with the North, Kim announced, "We will
definitely air raid North
Korea." All combat forces available
would be mobilized, he promised. The newly minted rules of
engagement are also going to permit "preemptive" strikes on North Korea
based on the presumption of a possible attack. In other words, if North Korea
fails to provide a pretext for military action, the Lee Administration can
attack the North without provocation, if it chooses to do so. (17)

Lee Myung-bak has already achieved his dream of demolishing the
Sunshine Policy. Relations between the two Koreas
are at their lowest point since the end of military dictatorship in South Korea.
Now he aims to deliberately trigger armed conflict in order to demonstrate
"toughness," and not incidentally, drive the final nail into the
coffin of the Sunshine Policy. Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin feels that the
risk of war is low. "It will be difficult for North Korea to conduct a full-scale
war because there are some elements of insecurity in the country, such as the
national economy and power transfer." (18) Those may be arguments against North Korea's
ability to successfully sustain a long-term war over the course of a year or
two, but it seriously misreads the ability and will of the North Korean
military to put up a determined fight. The extent of possible South Korean air
strikes on the North is not clear, but anything other than an extremely limited
and localized action is likely to trigger total war. And that is a war that the
U.S.
will inevitably be drawn into. Even presuming a quick defeat of the North
(which would be unlikely), eighty percent of North Korea is mountainous,
providing ideal terrain for North Korean forces to conduct guerrilla warfare.
The U.S.
could find itself involved in another failing military occupation. With both
sides heavily armed, the consequences could be much worse for Koreans, and
casualties could reach alarming totals. Four million Koreans died in the Korean
War. Even one percent of that total in a new war would be unconscionable, and
Lee Myung-bak is deluded if he believes he can ride the tiger of armed conflict
and remain in control of the path it takes.

(8) "Bush Admits He Considered a Military Strike Against North Korea," Korean Broadcasting System (Seoul), March 18,
2004. "Carl Vinson Strike Group CVN-70 'Gold Eagle'," www.globalsecurity.org Will Dunham, "U.S. Military
Operations for N.Korea Fraught with Peril," Reuters, April 25, 2003.

Gregory Elich is on the Board of
Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and on the Advisory Board of the
Korea Truth Commission. He is the author of the book Strange Liberators:
Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit.

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Apr 2017 - 4.1 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO rigorously described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM, September 2010 I am pleased to report that my essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS' has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) and appeared in their June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in relativity,as well as differential geometry(pure math) and of course analysis. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift&. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data and record impressions and interpretations on material read. Do join my blog and receive Four items of interest daily Monday through Saturday.